Interrogating schoolgirls in hijabs won't do anything to tackle their 'sexualisation'

Shelina Janmohamed

On a perfectly unremarkable outing to the supermarket, my six year old recently decided she would wear her green spotted headscarf (the one with a bow on it). "Err, do you really need to wear that to the shops?" I asked her nervously.

I felt hypocritical challenging her independent sartorial choices, since I wear a headscarf myself.

"Mummy, I want to!" she said, with that determined face little girls have, which means that you should agree OR ELSE.

Children make eyebrow raising clothing choices all the time. But my worry was that people would think I had forced her to wear it, judging me that, as a Muslim parent, I was oppressing her.

I tell this story because my daughter’s choices are likely to come under government-sponsored interrogation. If she happened, one day, to decide to wear her green spotted scarf to school (luckily it matches her green uniform), she could find herself at the...